🌐
Instructables
instructables.com › circuits › computers
Make an Easy to Remember Hard to Guess Password : 6 Steps - Instructables
October 17, 2017 - Think of it like playing a game and you get the super-duper high score and it goes from 9999999 to 0000000. There are better and newer hash generators out there like SHA-1, but for our purposes, MD5 will work just fine. Come up with some ideas for passwords. The number one priority here is how easy it is to remember.
🌐
The Silver Lining
thesilverlining.com › westbendcares › blog › how-to-create-a-password-thats-easy-to-remember-but-hard-to-guess
How to create a password that’s easy to remember & hard to guess
February 24, 2015 - In addition to these suggestions, mixing upper and lower case letters in your password is always a good idea, and adding special characters (i.e., @, $, !, etc.) within the password to make it harder to guess or hack. Just do it in a way that’s easy for you to remember, like replacing each letter S with a $ or a 5. To make your password even stronger, remember that longer is better · The table below better illustrates how these methods can strengthen your password. It lists various passwords and the time a hacker takes to crack them. As you can see, there are ways to create passwords that are easy to remember but hard for others to guess.
🌐
mdigi.tools
mdigi.tools › memorable-password
Memorable Password Generator - mdigi.tools
Memorable Password Generator will generate an easy to remember yet strong password using phrases. You will also get a phrase (set of words) to remember the password easily. You can use the memorable password when signing up on online services ...
🌐
DinoPass
dinopass.com
DinoPass - Simple password generator for kids
A simple password with easy-to-remember words and numbers. Good for casual use but less secure
🌐
Bitwarden
bitwarden.com › password-generator
Free Password Generator | Create Strong Passwords and Passphrases | Bitwarden
Generate strong passwords and passphrases for every online account with the strong Bitwarden password generator, and get the latest best practices on how to maintain password security and privacy online.
🌐
AbilityNet
abilitynet.org.uk › factsheets › tips-creating-strong-passwords-you-can-remember
Tips for creating strong passwords you can remember | AbilityNet
Probably my favourite in terms of how to create a seemingly random password that's easy for you to remember, is to take a line from your favorite song or a quote you love and use the first letter of each word. ... Lyric: "If you like piña coladas. And gettin' caught in the rain!"
🌐
Function Point
functionpoint.com › home › blog › make a hard-to-guess password that is easy to remember
Make a hard-to-guess password that is easy to remember | FP
May 26, 2022 - Keep the characters and digits in the same order they appeared in the word and number, but alternate the characters and numbers in an easy to memorize way. Here are some examples: ... The most important thing is to split up the letters of the word. This way the new password can’t be ‘read’ as a word or phrase. That’s all there is to it! Now instead of having to remember a long, meaningless password, we just have to remember a number (that only has meaning to us), and our favourite ‘password’ word.
🌐
1Password
1password.com › password-generator
A Secure, Strong Password Generator | 1Password
Random passwords can contain a jumble of ambiguous characters or combine unrelated words. That's how 1Password Strong Password Generator creates passwords that are easy to remember but still cryptographically strong.
🌐
Reddit
reddit.com › r/lifehacks › create long complex passwords that are easy to remember!
r/lifehacks on Reddit: Create long complex passwords that are easy to remember!
January 21, 2023 -

UPDATE: (also added in comments)

I've been using LastPass for almost 10 years now, so I 100% agree that password managers are the way to go to manage the hundreds of different logins that we all have now.

I should have probably clarified this originally, but this suggestion is really for those passwords you can't (or at least shouldn't) store in a password app, like the master password for the password app itself, your network login for work, or the password for your own personal computer. These should also be the passwords that you should probably be changing more frequently as well!

Take a line or two from one of your favorite songs and then use the first letter (or corresponding symbol and/or number) of each syllable.

So for example

"Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" could be represented as

Awlotbsol @W1otbs0l aW10+b$01

etc etc

You may need to write it down at first, especially when you first create or change it and need to enter it twice. But after entering it a few times, all you need to do is remember the line of the song and you'll remember your password!

And for passwords you need to change frequently, just use the next line in the song as your next password!

Find elsewhere
🌐
Hivenet
hivenet.com › post › how-to-create-strong-passwords-and-remember-them-easily
How to Create Strong Passwords and Remember Them Easily| Hivenet
For example, "PurpleMonkeySky92!" is much stronger than "password123," and it’s easier to recall since it's a visual and memorable combination of words. Another trick is to replace some letters with symbols or numbers. For instance, you could turn the word "Banana" into "B@n@n@!" or "Sunshine" into "5un5h!n3". This adds complexity without making it hard to remember. If you want truly random passwords, use a password generator. These tools create complex passwords on the spot.
🌐
Becybersafe
becybersafe.com › passwords › password-ideas.html
12 Strong Password Ideas to Stay Safe Online | BeCyberSafe.com
12 ideas for how to create strong passwords that are both easy to remember and effective.
🌐
Cranky Boss
crankyboss.org › home › easy passwords to remember but hard to guess: one clever trick
Easy Passwords to Remember But Hard to Guess: One Clever Trick - Cranky Boss
May 1, 2025 - Password: MfmiTMri1999! It’s easy for you to remember—but someone else would have a very hard time guessing it.
🌐
Wikihow
wikihow.com › computers and electronics › internet › internet security › internet passwords and usernames › how to create a password you can remember (that's strong!)
How to Create a Password You Can Remember (That's Strong!)
November 3, 2005 - An easy way to remember which characters were replaced is to replace the vowels of your password. For example, if you want your password to be "NeedleInAHayStack" but your favorite numbers are 2 and 7, you could create the password ...
🌐
CISA
cisa.gov › secure-our-world › use-strong-passwords
Use Strong Passwords | CISA
Simple passwords, such as 12345, ... personal information. Using an easy-to-guess password is like locking the door but leaving the key in the lock. Weak passwords can quickly be broken by computer hackers.
🌐
PCMAG
pcmag.com › home › how-to › security › password managers
3 Simple Tricks for Remembering Strong Passwords | PCMag
November 1, 2024 - Was it Tr0ub4dor&3, or Tr0ub4dor3&? Or maybe Tr0m30ne&3? A passphrase like correct horse battery staple is significantly more difficult to crack, due to its length, but also much easier to remember.
🌐
Warpconduit
warpconduit.net › password-generator
Easy-to-Remember Readable Pronounceable Password Generator
March 7, 2023 - Finally, a password generator that creates easy-to-remember readable pronounceable passwords. Select how many passwords and the length, then click Generate.
🌐
iSumsoft
isumsoft.com › computer › how-to-create-a-strong-password-that-is-easy-to-remember.html
How to Create a Strong Password That's Easy to Remember
For example, as a science comic shows, the password Tr0ub4dor&3 could be cracked by the computer within 3 days. In contrast, the passphrase correct horse battery staple takes much more time for the computer to crack. From the perspective of practices, a passphrase is easy to remember, but hard to guess.
🌐
Proton
proton.me › blog › create-remember-strong-passwords
How to create and remember strong passwords | Proton
January 17, 2024 - In practice, this is all but impossible for humans to do without resorting to using tools. Password managers such as Proton Pass are apps that can generate and remember unlimited secure passwords (or passphrases) for you.
🌐
Ptrc
ptrc.org › services › workforce-development › career-seeker-services › ncworks-triad › creating-passwords
Creating Passwords that are Easy to Remember and Difficult to Hack | Piedmont Triad Regional Council, NC
Also don't use dates such as birthdays or anniversaries. These are easy guesses for cyber-pirates. The optimal password is 8-12 characters. It includes upper and lower case, numbers and special characters such as @ or #. Phrases can be easier to remember and can create complex passwords.
Top answer
1 of 14
69

The main problem with passwords is not password complexity, but password reuse (obligatory xkcd). One service leaks logins and passwords, suddenly lots of providers see a surge on account hijacks. Why? Because we humans cannot remember dozens of different passwords, so we create one password for common services, and one for special ones. But most of us will have only one password.

Don't create your own passwords, use a password manager. They can create very complex passwords, one for each service, have plugins and extensions for the major browsers, have strong encryption, cloud backup, multi device syncing, and more. Don't trust your brain to create different random passwords for each service.

Using a password manager means you will only need to know one password - the master one. This password can be written down and kept on your wallet. All the others will be created by the manager, and can contain 128 chars, 10 numbers, 30 special chars, including ĥaŕd-tö-tỹpẽ ones...

2 of 14
29

Definitely take Thorium's answer seriously. However, I figured I might as well try to address your actual question too.

You'll hear this all the time on a security board like this, but I'll say it anyway: the answer always depends on your anticipated threat vector. I'll focus on brute-force attacks by people who aren't specifically targeting you (because that sounds like your primary concern), but the situation is much different if someone is specifically targeting you. Let's keep it simple though.

Untargeted Offline brute-force attack

A big reason for high-entropy passwords is to defeat offline brute-force attacks. Obviously offline brute-force attacks are trivially easy if the hacked service uses plain-text passwords (which is a very important reason why you should never reuse passwords across sites). However, what if your password ends up in a dump from a service that uses MD5 for passwords? There are rigs out there that can test hundreds of billions of passwords per second against MD5. The best defense against such an attack is simply password length, and making sure your password isn't on a password list or a simple variation of common password schemes people use.

Even with an offline brute-force against an MD5 password list, an attacker isn't going to just exhaustively search password space. They will start by downloading lists of previously-cracked passwords and trying all of those. Then they'll take a list of the most commonly used password-generation schemes and try those. The "combination of dictionary words" generation phrase is common enough that they may even try that. If so, the question is how long can you hold up? Depends on how many words you have and how many words are in your list. There are 7776 words in the diceware list, so let's use that. That means a 4 word passphrase has approximately 3.66e15 different passwords combinations it can make. At a rate of 200 billion passwords per second (a top-of-the-line hashing rig) it will take 5 hours to search that password space. Here is the search time depending on the number of words in your password:

  • 4 words: 5 hours
  • 5 words: 4.5 years
  • 6 words: 35,000 years
  • 7 words: 270 million years
  • 8 words: 2 trillion years

Of course MD5 is terrible. If your password was leaked from a system that uses more modern hashing methods, even a 4 word password will be effectively uncrackable. However, it's best to assume the worst and, for important services, assume the person on the other end is using the worst possible security and choose accordingly (i.e. assume plain-text passwords or MD5). There are plenty of systems out there that are still using MD5 for passwords.

The unknowns

There are lots of unknowns though, which makes this hard to answer. We've assumed that an attacker has tried to brute force a diceware-like password and is using the exact same password list that you used. Those are a lot of assumptions, and a hacker might not bother or might not have your word list. What if they don't and instead just try an exhaustive search? Assuming an average word length of 5 characters, a 4 word diceware password is 20 characters long. They are doing an exhaustive search so must check all letters and numbers even though you have only lowecase letters (we'll be nice and ignore special characters). Now there are 7e35 password combinations to try (if they want to search all passwords up to 20 characters long), or 1e17 years of computation with a top-notch hashing rig before exhaustively searching the necessary password space. In other words, there is absolutely no chance of your password being cracked. Obviously, no one would even bother trying that. Which is what it really comes down to. Most people who are just trying to crack as many passwords as they can are going to try the obvious answers first. Past a certain level of complexity there is some safety in the simple fact that you are no longer the low-hanging fruit. Of course if someone is specifically targeting you, then all bets are off (another obligatory xkcd).

Still, I'd probably opt for 6 or more words. Also, don't reuse it anywhere.

Regarding disk encryption/password managers

In a comment you mention that your interest may primarily be in selecting a master password for a password manager, or a password for disk encryption. This is a slightly different use-case. Modern password hashing algorithms are designed to be slow and therefore hard to brute-force. However, encryption algorithms work a bit differently and "slowness" is not as important for encryption as it is for password hashing (to some extent too much slowness is even a bad thing). How "hard" it is to brute force an encryption key varies wildly depending on the exact details of the encryption method (so I can't really guess at what that would look like in practice), but comparing against something like MD5 might not be a bad reference point.

An important difference (h/t Michael Kjörling) is that with local disk encryption or password manager you may have control over the cost factor for the key generation process. In this case you can crank up the "hardness", decrease your password length, and find your own acceptable compromise between security, ease of memory, and "how long I have to wait until this thing opens" (i.e. ease of use).